Flexible reinforced tubes and hoses are widely known in the art.
A method to produce such reinforced tubes and hoses, comprises the steps of winding reinforcing material round a polymer tube or hose or round a mandrel. E.g. U.S. Pat. No. 3,930,091 shows such method to provide a reinforced tube, winding glasfibers round a mandrel.
When metal elements, being metal wires, bundles of metal wires, metal cords or metal strands are to be used to reinforce a tube or hose, a polymer strip, comprising metal elements running essentially in the longitudinal direction of the strip may be used. Such strips are wound round a polymer tube or on a mandrel. Afterwards, after providing the reinforcing layers, the polymer is to be heated to ensure the adhesion of the polymer layers to each other and eventually to the polymer tube supporting the reinforcing layers.
The advantage of the use of such strips is that only one or a few strips are to be controlled during production of the reinforced tube or hose, rather than controlling individually a large set of metal elements during production.
The present invention relates to disadvantages, which may be met using such polymer strips, comprising metal elements in longitudinal direction. These disadvantages are mainly that no polymer material can make contact with a metal element of an adjacent layer, when two (or more) layers of such strips are wound on top of each other. Further, due to the necessary thickness of the polymer material surrounding the metal elements, a minimum thickness of the reinforcing layer is provided, which for some applications still is too thick. Too much than necessary polymer material may be present between different layers of metal elements.